Trucking startup FR8 raises Rs 6.5 Cr from Omnivore Partners

FR8 launched its product in June 2016 and already has 2,500 trucks from 400 vendors on the marketplace. It currently books around 1,000 orders worth about Rs 2.5 crore a month.Madhav Chanchani | ET Bureau | October 27, 2016, 07:23 IST

The startup, founded by two former Asian Paints executives, competes with players like BlackBuck, which is backed by Flipkart and Tiger Global.

FR8 launched its product in June 2016 and already has 2,500 trucks from 400 vendors on the marketplace. It currently books around 1,000 orders worth about Rs 2.5 crore a month.

“We are planning to grow 10 times over the next 12 months,“ said Vasanth Immanuel, who started the company with Jayend ran Panneerselvam. It plans to expand the network from seven cities - Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Madurai -to 17.

Besides expansion, the fund will also be used for investing in technology and talent.

The company has enterprise and F&B clients like Philips, Asian Paints, Pepperfry, Britannia, Preethi Kitchen Appliances and Paperboat. It connects these clients with trucks depending on the requirement, and vendors are notified if their trucks match the job.

“We offer a four-hour commitment to our clients and manually connect orders which have not gotten matched automatically. We believe that we are very capital efficient as we have scaled to Rs 2.5 crore of monthly bookings without raising any capital,“ said Immanuel, a post graduate from NITIE who worked for seven year at Asian Paints managing supply chain.

Omnivore Partners is investing from a Rs 260-crore fund. “Omnivore believes that FR8 will transform long-haul trucking across India while benefiting the agribusiness ecosystem through optimised backhauling of farm commodities,“ said Mark Kahn, founding partner at Omnivore.